Titans trade All-Pro lineman Jeffery Simmons to Bears a day after ‘I am going to be here’

Jeffery Simmons told reporters he was not looking ahead. He had heard nothing from his agent and nothing from the Tennessee Titans, and as far as he knew, he was staying. The next day the Titans traded their captain, their All-Pro defensive tackle and, in NFL.com’s words, one of the few reasons left to tune into their games, to the Chicago Bears.

Most of the coverage reads the deal from Chicago’s side: a general manager pushing his chips in behind Caleb Williams, and a price no defensive tackle has fetched in the common draft era. That is the transaction. The person inside it is a player who kept choosing Tennessee through the losing, signed on again this summer, and has now learned what a long contract actually guarantees. It guarantees the money, not the address.

“Each and every day I wake up, my goal is to be where my feet are at,” Simmons said, according to ESPN. “I haven’t heard anything from my agent; I haven’t heard anything from this organization. As far as I know, I am going to be here.”

The captain who kept signing on with the Titans

Simmons arrived hurt. He tore his ACL while training for the draft after leaving Mississippi State, and the Titans took him in the first round anyway, 19th overall. He opened his rookie year on the non-football injury list, then sacked Philip Rivers in his first NFL game.

The Titans he joined won. They reached the AFC Championship Game in his rookie season and took the division in each of the next two. In the Divisional Round loss to Cincinnati after the 2021 season, he sacked Joe Burrow three times. It is still the last playoff game he has played. Tennessee went 7-10, then 6-11, then 3-14 twice.

He stayed through all of it. The Titans gave him a four-year, $94 million extension in 2023. He was elected captain for a sixth straight season this September. On a 3-14 team last year he finally made first-team All-Pro, with a career-high 11 sacks. In June, Tennessee signed him to a three-year, $105.8 million extension with $100 million guaranteed, the deal NFL.com described as cementing him as a franchise cornerstone under new head coach Robert Saleh.

Why Tennessee let its best player go

Five months later the Titans were 1-6, and the rebuild the extension was meant to anchor had stopped running on Simmons’ clock. He turns 30 next summer. Pro Football Network analyst Ben Rolfe read the move as Tennessee admitting “they think they are at least two years from contending.” His colleague Kyle Soppe called it “discouraging to the fans, obviously, but a responsible move that can accelerate a rebuild process.”

The money that read as permanence in June now travels with him. Tennessee carries $21 million in dead cap in 2027, per Over The Cap figures cited by NFL Trade Rumors, and Chicago takes on the rest of his $13 million base salary this season.

Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk sent him off with a statement that spent as much time on the man as on the player. “His formidable presence on the field was surpassed only by what he did off it,” she said, crediting his Give ‘Em A Reason Foundation in Middle Tennessee and Mississippi. “Jeff — thank you. For how you played, how you led, and how you represented our team.”

What the Bears are buying in Jeffery Simmons

Chicago needed exactly the thing he does. ESPN reports that the Bears’ standard rush of four or fewer has produced the fourth-lowest pressure rate in the league over the past two seasons, and that their interior defenders rank 23rd in pass-rush win rate this year. Simmons leads every defensive tackle in that measure, at 27%. NFL.com counts 28 pressures, the most at his position, 10 of them against double teams.

He also walks into a familiar room. Edge rusher Montez Sweat, who is returning from a two-game suspension, was his teammate at Mississippi State.

The terms: Tennessee receives Chicago’s 2027 and 2028 first-round picks and a 2027 fourth-rounder, and the Bears get Simmons plus a 2028 fifth. ESPN Research says he is the first defensive tackle since 1967 traded for multiple first-round picks. ESPN calls it arguably the most aggressive trade of Ryan Poles’ tenure as general manager, and he had never before traded multiple first-round picks. Rolfe also flagged the risk on Chicago’s side: “In 2-3 years time, this has the potential to look a really ugly trade.” The 5-2 Bears face the reigning champion Seattle Seahawks on Monday night, and the trade deadline is Nov. 10.

Simmons says he wakes up every day trying to be where his feet are. For four losing seasons, that meant Tennessee, by choice. Now it means Chicago, by someone else’s, on a team that just spent two first-round picks betting his feet belong in January.

Tags: Chicago Bears, Tennessee Titans, NFL trades, Jeffery Simmons, Ryan Poles